Have You Been Silenced Before?

>>The >>silencing of Senator Kamala Harris Wednesday by our own North Carolina Senator Richard Burr and Senator John McCain felt familiar to me. I’ve been there before. I’ve sat in a meeting and pushed for answers and fought to make points – only to have male colleagues work collectively to dismiss me.

You know the feeling. You’ve been there too. You collect a point in your head at a meeting, you assert yourself to answer, and your mail colleagues interrupt you, or share smiles as they answer, as if to say your point is ridiculous and unfounded.

It happens in boardrooms and offices and (fill in the blank) around the country, and Wednesday it happened in a very public forum on a very important issue.

Sheryl Sandberg calls it ‘manterrupting’ and defines it as unnecessary interruption of a woman by a man. It’s a problem that’s >>well documented by researchers – as if you needed any proof. In this research published in the New Republic, men interrupted females 25% more often in a three minute period than their male colleagues. To be fair, women interrupted other women, compared to men, at an even higher rate.

In October 2017, President Trump announced that the administration would immediately stop reimbursing health insurance companies for providing legally required discounts on deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs on Marketplace plans to eligible enrollees. The cancellation of payment for these con...

Words cannot capture the excitement our team at Women AdvaNCe feels after our time with you last Thursday. Your enthusiasm, engagement, and generosity lifts us on this Monday morning. We look forward to having you in our community. There are opportunities to write for us through the Writer's Colle...

In October 2017, President Trump announced that the administration would immediately stop reimbursing health insurance companies for providing legally required discounts on deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs on Marketplace plans to eligible enrollees. The cancellation of payment for these con...

Words cannot capture the excitement our team at Women AdvaNCe feels after our time with you last Thursday. Your enthusiasm, engagement, and generosity lifts us on this Monday morning. We look forward to having you in our community. There are opportunities to write for us through the Writer's Colle...